I know I don’t need to use a big word here. I could have just said “couch potato”. But, since I am a wordsmith, I am always on the lookout for the most descriptive description.

How does “sedentary” fit in with Retirement Community Life? That is what this post is all about.

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During my recent On-The-Road trip that covered 6,000 miles of the South and Southwest parts of the U.S. I looked at six different retirement communities to see if they might be a better fit for my present situation. For the most part, all but two of those six were much like where I presently live. I am looking for a place that supports my current fairly active lifestyle. There were two that did that, but I ruled them out because of the extreme summer heat, and the ever more frequent hurricanes. 🥸 As I have investigated possibilities here in the Midwest the results have been pretty dismal. Most don’t even offer an independent-living option and the ones that do are not much different from where I currently live.

From my investigations so far I have discovered that most “independent living” facilities are sedentary at best. It seems that their most strenuous activity is sitting in a chair in a circle and passing a large beach ball around. I kinda deem these places as “pre-assistive living”. Don’t get me wrong, pre-assistive living places are needed, especially for the post-WWI generation who are now occupying them. From my personal experiences what this generation want is just to be let alone until they can no longer support the basic needs of living. The community I live in has about 140 independent-living apartments, but when I tried to offer them help with dealing with hearing loss only two showed up. From statistics, there are at least 50 who could use what I have to offer. They were just not interested in what I had to offer to improve their lives.

Getting back to my search, I am primarily looking for a facility that will provide this Baby Boomer a more active lifestyle. Given what I learned at one community I visited, I am not the only one seeking this option. “The Villages” in Florida have near 100,000 people in their very active communities. I can imagine that if something even on a much smaller scale was offered here in the Midwest, they would be flooded with applications from us Baby Boomers who will soon dominate retirement communities. I would likely be one of them.